George Orwell
George Orwell
George Orwell
Orwell was a British journalist and author, who wrote two of the most famous
novels of the 20th century 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.
Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of a
British colonial civil servant. He was educated in England and, after he left Eton,
joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. He resigned in
1927 and decided to become a writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of
success as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs. He described his
experiences in his first book, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', published in
1933. He took the name George Orwell, shortly before its publication. This was
followed by his first novel, 'Burmese Days', in 1934.
An anarchist in the late 1920s, by the 1930s he had begun to consider himself a
socialist. In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among
unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in 'The Road to Wigan
Pier' (1937). Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans
against Franco's Nationalists. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-
backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The
experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist.
Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. In 1943, he
became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. By now he was
a prolific journalist, writing articles, reviews and books.
In 1945, Orwell's 'Animal Farm' was published. A political fable set in a farmyard
but based on Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution, it made Orwell's name
and ensured he was financially comfortable for the first time in his life. 'Nineteen
Eighty-Four' was published four years later. Set in an imaginary totalitarian future,
the book made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases - such as 'Big
Brother is watching you', 'newspeak' and 'doublethink' - entering popular use. By
now Orwell's health was deteriorating and he died of tuberculosis on 21 January
1950.
Dystopian Literature
Dystopian literature is a genre of fictional writing that is used to explore social and
political structures in "a dark and nightmare world." The term dystopia is defined as
a society characterized by poverty, misery or oppression and the theme is most
commonly used in the genres of science fiction and speculative fiction .